Beth was young, only 28. She was graduated from college with honors. She taught two years in a Christian school, had two small daughters, a husband-and cancer. Her doctor described it as terminal.
She became more and more disheartened. Behind polite smiles were guilt, resentment, fear, and brooding apathy. When asked one day by an elder, “Are you ever angry with God?”, she replied with a small smile, “No, I may not be angry with God, my Heavenly Father. He knows best!”
It sounded pious. The words appeared theologically sound. The elder felt good, and he was able to report glowingly about her submission, trust, and surrender.
But Beth’s words were not honest. They did not come from her deep-down self. She played a successful role as a good church member, but she continued to be an unhappy, angry, resentful, guilt-laden daughter of God.
The Father who counts the hairs of our heads and the malignant cells in our bodies wants to hear how his child really feels. In fact, he doesn’t mind when his child lets him have it. He’s big enough and experienced enough to take it.
Job cursed his birthday:
Let the day perish wherein I was born . . . let those curse it who curse the day . . . (Job 3:3, 8).
Jeremiah told God in no uncertain terms what was on his heart:
O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived. Thou art stronger than I, and thou hast prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all the day; everyone mocks me (Jeremiah 20:7).
He even was angry with the man who didn’t abort him in the womb:
Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father . . . Let that man be like the cities which the Lord overthrew without pity . . . because he did not kill me in the womb; so my mother would have been my grave, and her womb forever great (Jeremiah 20:15, 17).
St. Teresa of Avila knew intimate friendship with God. One day she fell off her donkey into a mud puddle. She looked up to heaven and said, “If this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so many enemies.”
Let’s not ask, “Is it right to talk this way? Isn’t it sin?” Try to hear these words of angry complaint as “honest conversations of children with a Heavenly Father whom children trust.”
Beth needed encouragement to be honest with God. She needed to tell it to God like it is. She needed open faith, genuine trust in God as a friend, and released feelings to the Savior who can be touched with the feelings of our infirmities.
Why try to put up a front with him?
-Alexander C. DeJong, editor SECOND MONDAY
Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
